Guide to Case Analysis

Guide to Case Analysis

Begin your analysis by reading the case once for familiarity. An Initial reading should give you the general flavor of the situation and make possible preliminary identification of issues.

On the second reading, attempt to gain full command of the facts. You may wish to make notes about apparent organizational goals, objectives, strategies, policies, symptoms of problems, problems, root causes of problems, unresolved issues and roles of key individuals.

Be alert for issues or problems which are not necessarily made explicit but which nevertheless are lurking beneath the surface. Read between the lines and do not hesitate to do some detective work on your own. For instance, the apparent issue in the case might be whether a product has ample market potential at the current selling price while the root problem is that the method being used to compensate salespeople fails to generate adequate incentive for achieving greater unit volume.

Developing an ability to evaluate companies and size up their situations is the key to case analysis. How do you evaluate a company?.

In general,

1) The financial position of the firm must be scrutinized closely

2) Compare and evaluate the firm's external opportunities and internal resources.

3) Assess the future potentials of the company.

4) Decide how urgent the organization's difficulties are and weigh the probable impacts upon performance and capability

5) Pin-point the key factors which are crucial to success or failure

6) Strive for defensible arguments and positions

7) Do not rely upon just your own opinion, support any judgements or conclusions with evidence.

8) Use available data to make whatever relevant accounting, financial, marketing and operations analysis.